You Are Here For A Reason
...in this particular time and place in your life...And perhaps the very specific
challenges facing you right now are truly invitations to expand your capacity to be
patient...courageous...flexible...forgiving...to make wise choices...to see things from a
wider perspective...and by embracing & growing through them, to become every more
fully the compassionate, insightfull, aware, wise, deep & breathing soul that you are
truly meant to be...

Lions, Tigers, and ?Bears?
One of my favorite web cams is Africam. The earliest
IM chats Peggy and I had were with her sitting in Australia and me here in California, and
both of us watching wild animals at watering holes in Africa. A true Internet experience!

Perth cam
...and now that Peggy is back in Australia, I can sit here in California and look at life in Perth.

SF cam
Or I can just sit here and look at what's going
on in my home town, San Francisco.

Son camOr I can just check in with the radio station where Ned
works and see if he appears on their
web cam.

When Peggy was here, we listened to a lot of
John Denver music (which I don't think Steve has forgiven me for). I was so intrigued by
so many of his lyrics that I wanted to read the story behind them, so borrowed the book
from her.

If you were to dedicate your life to a single cause, what would
it be? Which crusade could you feel passionate enough about to want your voice heard, your
actions recognized?

It will come as no surprise to anybody who has read this journal for
any significant period of time that the cause to which I feel the closest revolves around
AIDS--care and support for those who are HIV positive or living with AIDS, education of
people about protection against passing the HIV virus, and getting people who are HIV
positive or who have AIDS identified and into treatment.

In the early 1980s, I heard about this new "gay plague"
that was infecting the gay community. I worked at that time for a theatre group, where I
knew a lot of gay people, but we were lucky that the disease never touched us.

In 1986, our luck ran out, when Arthur Conrad, dancer, actor,
choreographer, director, died suddenly. He was diagnosed on Friday and dead by Sunday. I
had worked as his assistant just a few months before. Shortly after Arthurs death,
John Gilkerson (whom Tom Hanks recognized in his acceptance speech for his Oscar for Philadelphia;
Hanks and Gilkerson were classmates at Skyline High School in Oakland) was diagnosed and
we watched John die. AIDS was beginning to touch my life.

In the early 1990s, I joined CompuServe and began to participate in
several discussion groups, one of which was regarding gay and lesbian issues. In the
Gay/Lesbian Issues group, I corresponded with people who had AIDS and then in 1996, I met
some of these men Id learned to know and care about. I remember saying something to
Mike (one of them) about it. With his usual acerbic manner, he said "So? It means
that some of your friends will die sooner than some of your other friends."
Ironically, Mikes husband, Bill, whom we did not expect to last that year, actually
lived longer than two of my own children.

I couple of years later, I had the opportunity to spend time with
Mike and Bill, after Bills hospitalization. Just kind of being there as a companion,
helping out with houswork, and that sort of thing. By the time I went home, I felt like
Mike and Bill had become my brothers, and so now AIDS not only touched people I cared
about, it had infiltrated my extended family.

For years, I had this idea in mind that I wanted to work somehow
with some sort of AIDS outreach group. I knew they existed but I had not extended myself
to find one. And then in June of 1998, I was working at a PLFAG booth for the Gay Pride
Day celebration in Sacramento and on the way back to the car, I passed a booth for
Breaking Barriers, a social service outreach to HIV/AIDS clients and I saw that they were
signing up volunteers. I signed up, went through an orientation, and since that time have
been driving clients to and from doctors appointments, appointments with government
entities, doing emotional support, and going out to fairs passing out condoms, answering
questions about AIDS and HIV, and soliciting volunteers, much as I was recruited.

Through work with Breaking Barriers, I have found the most rewarding
experiences, made wonderful friends, both affected and unaffected people. Ive
learned a lot about this disease, and it has increased my passion for educating people,
especially young people, who make up over half of the new cases of HIV today, about the
continuing threat of HIV and the need to act responsibly and prevent the spread of the
disease.

My dedication to this cause deepened in late 1999 when I met Steve Schalchlin. Steve, who has become one of my
best friends, is a man living with AIDS who spends a lot of his time traveling around the
country, speaking with college and high school kids, telling his story in a non-preachy
way, and just letting them hear and see the reality of living with AIDS. Ive
seen him interact with medical professionals and I see the effect that his story has on
them.

I am proud to have helped in some small way to work with Steve to
spread his message, to work with Breaking Barriers clients, who give me far more than I
give to them, and to do some little thing to spread the message.

Young people today think AIDS is no big deal. They feel either that
they are immune (as all kids feel immortal), or they dont understand that AIDS
isnt just another disease that you take medication to live with. The new AIDS
medications are allowing people like Steve to live longer lives--and that is wonderful.
But the flip side of that is that young people dont see AIDS as a death threat any
more and so the fear factor is gone and risky behavior is rampant. A friend of mine, who
is a nurse practitioner working on a college campus, tells me that most of her clients
confess to not using safe sex practices because they have no fear of AIDS.

High school teachers tell us that high school kids laugh when they
talk of AIDS because they dont feel that it will affect them. Or they think it only
happens to gay people.

In the middle of the new spike in the number new HIV cases, AIDS
funding is down because its not seen as the acute crisis that it was ten years ago.

The need for education about HIV and AIDS is great and if I have
only one "cause" for which to work, that would have to be it.